Dostoevsky's notes from the dead house are about. “Notes of a Dead Man” - Kazan rock inspired by karate

There were many objectionable musical groups in the Soviet Union; they tried to discredit them or ban them, but they, of course, continued to appear. One of these was the group “Notes of a Dead Man,” formed in Kazan in the mid-80s by martial arts fan Vitaly Kartsev and physicist with honors Vladimir Guskov.

Vitaly became a vocalist and was responsible for all the lyrics, Vladimir became a guitarist and took on backing vocals. Around the same time, a rock club was born in the Kazan Youth Center and it was there that the friends found the rest of the band members. They were joined by drummer, and later by PR manager Andrei Anikin, amazed by the energy of Vitaly’s self-expression and his poems “on the topic of the day.” In the same club they met Vladimir Burmistrov, also a drummer, but in the group he successfully played the role of a “percussionist”. And the fifth member of ZMCH was Vitaly’s old friend – bassist Viktor Shurgin. So, having completed the lineup, ZMCH set out on the path of a rebellious rock band. It was hard work - they had neither a permanent place for rehearsals, nor smart instruments, nor connections in the musical community. However, in the field, in one day, the first album of the ZMCH group “Incubator of Fools” was recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder in the utility room in 1986.

Before the appearance of ZMCh, Vitaly Kartsev had been involved in martial arts and martial arts for years - Eastern philosophy in general had a very strong influence on him. And his personality and worldview were transferred to the group’s work - the very name “Notes of a Dead Man” was inspired by the poems of the Japanese poet and Zen master Shido Bunan: “Living like a dead man,” and the music developed in a certain integral direction with elements of post-punk, rock and psychedelics. Vitaly's passion for Eastern teachings is clearly felt in all the constituent groups - abstract texts about the search for life value, mixed with a painful, sometimes mournful sound, are associatively reminiscent of the esotericism of Asia.

Notes of a Dead Man, 1989

In the same 1986, they performed at a rock festival in the House of Pioneers of the Soviet District, where they were noticed by TV presenter Shamil Fattakhov and invited to participate in the “versus” of those times - the musical television program “Duel”. Having appeared on the big screen, ZMCH no longer went unnoticed with their political hints in their songs. According to Kartsev, an order was given from above to merge the group, and in the second part of the program, ZMCH lost and dropped out of the show. Recalling that period, he talked about the judges sent: “The first thing we played on this program was “HamMillioniya” - with a hint of our society. And the second - “The Powerless Contemplator” - was about the fact that one person is powerless to change anything in this world mired in dirty political games. The performance was noticed, and Shamil received an order from above: make another pass to crush us. On the second program, letters began to be read out on air: supposedly people from the districts wrote that this was unacceptable and they did not like this kind of music. And there were also the same dispatched experts.”

ZMCH were amazingly prolific - in 1988 alone they recorded two albums. The first is “Children of Communism”, and the second “Exhumation” was recorded in one night in Moscow, at the Ostankino television studio. Such efficiency surprised both fellow musicians and fans, who did not have time to evaluate the previous album before the new one was released. But Kartsev does not dare take responsibility for the quality of music: “Everyone was surprised: how? And so, our musicians were first-class - they took everything on the fly. Nowadays bands are written for a lot of money in good studios, they sit for months, and the end result is often still crap. Of course, we may also have shit, but at least we did it quickly“, he recalls more than 20 years later. The album “Exhumation” is distinguished by its strong politicization, rebellious spirit and protest against officials and the political system that reigned in the last years of the USSR, but at the same time, there are also moments of despair in the lyrics, when the author talks about the lost hopes placed on Soviet society in vain.

ZMCH regularly went on small tours around the regions and continued to write music, despite the fact that all members of the group had a life outside the group - Vitaly, for example, studied at the Faculty of Law of Kazan University and continued to engage in martial arts. All ZMCh performances in small towns were accompanied by discontent from local officials and Komsomol members, but they continued anyway. Having gained sufficient popularity for the Kazan group, their music became interesting to directors and radio stations - their compositions were used as soundtracks in the short films “Wanderer in the Bulgars” and “Afghanistan”, and the song “Children of Communism” was heard on BBC radio. Of course, now, in the realities of the 21st century, it’s hard to call this a great success, but the young group from Kazan, who made music for music’s sake, didn’t need more.

In 1987, they changed the composition, replacing the guitarist and drummer: two brothers joined the group - Alexander (guitar and vocals) and Evgeniy (bass guitar and backing vocals) Gasilov, and Vladimir Burmistrov as a drummer. And former drummer Andrei Anikin began to perform those tasks that in our time are considered the sphere of PR management - he organized performances, negotiated the inclusion of the group in the program of various festivals, made contacts with the owners of recording studios and did other things necessary for the musical group. And he did a great job - ZMCH performed at festivals in different cities (Moscow “Rock for Democracy”, Leningrad “Aurora”, Barnaul “Rock Asia”, Samara “The Worst”), on television programs and in the Moscow House of Culture, recording along the way album after album.

Their complete discography is impressive - over the 10 years of their existence they have released 10 albums, literally one every year. At the same time, there are compositions that were never included in any of the works. Many of the albums were recorded in the shortest possible time - they recorded “The Science of Celebrating Death” in 1990 in Andrei Tropillo’s St. Petersburg studio in three or four days. The 1992 album “Prayer (Empty Heart)” became an important element in the life of the group - it was with it that ZMCH became the first Kazan group to sound at the Melodiya company, releasing the album on vinyl. Now the record is considered a rarity and is found only in the private collections of the most ardent fans, who, however, can sometimes sell any item for a fairly large amount.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

In the last years of the group's existence, Kartsev combined music studies and academic activities, whether studying at the university or teaching. Until 1994, in between tours in Russia, he went to Europe, where he taught qigong and bagua, returned to Russia and went on tour again.

Their texts often display the theme of mysticism, the dead, graves and other components of the cemetery: “I’m very brave today, I played the trumpet, all my grave neighbors applauded me.”– in the song “Brave Dead” Vitaly appears as an example of a deceased person, and in “Master of Silence” he states that "There is no friend more reliable than death". But in addition to thinking about the abstract, ZMCH often turn to politics and the social order that surrounds them, for which they turned out to be disliked by the ruling party. For example, in the song "Incubator of Fools", they sing about a system that "breeds turkeys so that they can be used by each otherinterruptedfaces, otherwise there will be no work for those who guard peace and success - the main cooks, the main parasites" clearly referring the listener to the realities of Soviet reality. But the general message of ZMCH’s work almost always leaves the listener with a feeling of hopelessness and despair. In one of the lines of “Trouble,” Vitaly summarizes that “Today is better than yesterday, and tomorrow, too, from a new line, the meager games of existence and the thrill of life in a dead center.” And this line is typical for all of ZMCH’s lyrics, and discussions about the poverty of life and mental death haunt all of the group’s work.

When listening to the ZMCH archive, a modern listener will find not a single flaw, but given all the conditions of the group’s existence, this is easy to forgive. It is impossible not to note their fertility and efficiency: 10 albums, and the compositions reach 10 minutes in length and are filled with completely different sounds and instruments, creating the overall impression of either a religious ceremony or a funeral procession.

The ZMCH project was closed not because of loss of interest, not because of quarrels among the participants and not because of changes in the country, as some believe, but because of the death of Vitaly Kartsev’s younger brother, which he does not like to talk about. Even during the existence of the group, he did not give up martial arts, and after the dissolution of the group he delved deeper into teaching, while the other participants remained in the musical field, just in other positions. Looking back, we can say that ZMCH left their mark on the Kazan rock movement and entered the galaxy of the best representatives of the Kazan wave of the 80s and early 90s.

“Notes from the House of the Dead” can rightfully be called the book of the century. If Dostoevsky had left behind only “Notes from the House of the Dead,” he would have gone down in the history of Russian and world literature as its original celebrity. It is no coincidence that critics assigned him, during his lifetime, a metonymic “middle name” - “the author of Notes from the House of the Dead” and used it instead of the writer’s surname. This book of Dostoevsky's books caused, as he accurately anticipated back in 1859, i.e. at the beginning of work on it, interest was “most capital” and it became a sensational literary and social event of the era.

The reader was shocked by pictures from the hitherto unknown world of Siberian “military hard labor” (military was harder than civilian), honestly and courageously painted by the hand of its prisoner - a master of psychological prose. “Notes from the House of the Dead” made a strong (though not equal) impression on A.I. Herzen, L.N. Tolstoy, I.S. Turgeneva, N.G. Chernyshevsky, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin and others. To the triumphant, but over the years, as if already half-forgotten glory of the author of “Poor People”, a powerful refreshing addition was added by the newly-minted glory of the great martyr and Dante’s House of the Dead at the same time. The book not only restored, but raised Dostoevsky’s literary and civic popularity to new heights.

However, the existence of “Notes from the House of the Dead” in Russian literature cannot be called idyllic. The censorship found fault with them stupidly and absurdly. Their “mixed” newspaper and magazine initial publication (the weekly Russkiy Mir and the magazine Vremya) lasted more than two years. The enthusiastic readership did not mean the understanding that Dostoevsky expected. He regarded the results of literary critical assessments of his book as disappointing: “In criticism”3<аписки>from Meurthe<вого>"At home" means that Dostoevsky exposed the prisons, but now it is outdated. That's what they said in the book<ых>shops<нах>, offering another, closer denunciation of the prisons" (Notebooks 1876-1877). Critics belittled the significance and lost the meaning of Notes from the House of the Dead. Such one-sided and opportunistic approaches to “Notes from the House of the Dead” only as an “exposure” of the penitentiary-convict system and, figuratively and symbolically, in general the “house of the Romanovs” (V.I. Lenin’s assessment), an institution of state power, have not been completely overcome and have not yet been completely overcome. so far. The writer, meanwhile, did not focus on “accusatory” goals, and they did not go beyond the bounds of immanent literary and artistic necessity. That is why politically biased interpretations of the book are essentially fruitless. As always, Dostoevsky here, as a heart expert, is immersed in the element of the personality of modern man, developing his concept of the characterological motives of people’s behavior in conditions of extreme social evil and violence.

The disaster that occurred in 1849 had dire consequences for Petrashevsky Dostoevsky. A prominent expert and historian of the royal prison M.N. Gernet, eeriely, but without exaggerating, comments on Dostoevsky’s stay in the Omsk prison: “One must be amazed that the writer did not die here” ( Gernet M.N. History of the royal prison. M., 1961. T. 2. P. 232). However, Dostoevsky took full advantage of the unique opportunity to comprehend up close and from the inside, in all the details inaccessible in the wild, the life of the common people, constrained by hellish circumstances, and to lay the foundations of his own literary knowledge of the people. “You are unworthy to talk about the people; you understand nothing about them. You did not live with him, but I lived with him,” he wrote to his opponents a quarter of a century later (Notebooks 1875-1876). “Notes from the House of the Dead” is a book worthy of the people (peoples) of Russia, based entirely on the difficult personal experience of the writer.

The creative story of “Notes from the House of the Dead” begins with secret entries in “my convict notebook.”<ую>", which Dostoevsky, violating the provisions of the law, led in the Omsk prison; from Semipalatinsk sketches “from memories<...>stay in hard labor" (letter to A.N. Maikov dated January 18, 1856) and letters of 1854-1859. (M.M. and A.M. Dostoevsky, A.N. Maikov, N.D. Fonvizina, etc.), as well as from oral stories among people close to him. The book was conceived and created for many years and surpassed in the duration of the creative time devoted to it. Hence, in particular, its genre-stylistic finishing, unusual for Dostoevsky in its thoroughness (not a shadow of the style of “Poor People” or), the elegant simplicity of the narrative is entirely the peak and perfection of form.

The problem of defining the genre of Notes from the House of the Dead has puzzled researchers. In the set of definitions proposed for the “Notes...” there are almost all types of literary prose: memoirs, book, novel, essay, research... And yet not a single one agrees in the totality of characteristics with the original. The aesthetic phenomenon of this original work consists of inter-genre borderliness and hybridity. Only the author of “Notes from the House of the Dead” was able to control the combination of document and address with the poetry of complex artistic and psychological writing that determined the unique originality of the book.

The elementary position of the recollector was rejected by Dostoevsky initially (see the instruction: “My personality will disappear” - in a letter to his brother Mikhail dated October 9, 1859) as unacceptable for a number of reasons. The fact of his condemnation to hard labor, well known in itself, did not represent a forbidden subject in the censorship-political sense (with the accession of Alexander II, censorship relaxations were outlined). The fictitious figure who ended up in prison for murdering his wife could not mislead anyone either. In essence, it was the mask of Dostoevsky the convict, which everyone understood. In other words, the autobiographical (and therefore valuable and captivating) story about the Omsk penal servitude and its inhabitants of 1850-1854, although overshadowed by a certain eye on censorship, was written according to the laws of an artistic text, free from the self-sufficient and restrained memory of the everyday personality memoir empiricism.

So far, no satisfactory explanation has been offered of how the writer managed to achieve a harmonious combination in a single creative process of chronicling (factography) with personal confession, knowledge of the people with self-knowledge, analyticity of thought, philosophical meditation with the epic nature of the image, meticulous microscopic analysis of psychological reality with fiction entertaining and concisely artless, Pushkin's type of storytelling. Moreover, “Notes from the House of the Dead” was an encyclopedia of Siberian hard labor in the mid-nineteenth century. The external and internal life of its population is covered - with the laconicism of the story - to the maximum, with unsurpassed completeness. Dostoevsky did not ignore a single idea of ​​the convict consciousness. The scenes from the life of the prison, chosen by the author for scrupulous consideration and leisurely comprehension, are recognized as stunning: “Bathhouse”, “Performance”, “Hospital”, “Claim”, “Exit from hard labor”. Their large, panoramic plan does not obscure the mass of all-encompassing particulars and details, no less piercing and necessary in their ideological and artistic significance in the overall humanistic composition of the work (the penny alms given by the girl to Goryanchikov; the undressing of the shackled men in the bathhouse; the flowers of the prisoner’s argotic eloquence and etc.)

The visual philosophy of “Notes from the House of the Dead” proves: “a realist in the highest sense” - as Dostoevsky would later call himself - did not allow his most humane (by no means “cruel”!) talent to deviate one iota from the truth of life, no matter how unpleasant and tragic it was neither was. With his book about the House of the Dead, he courageously challenged the literature of half-truths about man. Goryanchikov the narrator (behind whom Dostoevsky himself visibly and tangibly stands), observing a sense of proportion and tact, looks into all corners of the human soul, without avoiding the most distant and dark ones. Thus, not only the savage and sadistic antics of prison prisoners (Gazin, Akulkin’s husband) and executioners-executors by position (lieutenants Zherebyatnikov, Smekalov) came into his field of vision. The anatomy of the ugly and the vicious knows no bounds. “Brothers in misfortune” steal and drink the Bible, talk “about the most unnatural actions, with the most childishly cheerful laughter,” get drunk and fight on holy days, rave in their sleep with knives and “Raskolnikov’s” axes, go crazy, engage in sodomy (obscene “companionship” to which Sirotkin and Sushilov belong) get used to all sorts of abominations. One after another, from private observations of the current life of convict people, generalizing aphoristic judgments and maxims follow: “Man is a creature that gets used to everything, and, I think, this is the best definition of him”; “There are people like tigers, eager to lick blood”; “It’s hard to imagine how human nature can be distorted,” etc. - then they will join the artistic philosophical and anthropological fund of the “Great Pentateuch” and “The Diary of a Writer.” Scientists are right when they consider it not “Notes from Underground”, but “Notes from the House of the Dead” to be the beginning of many beginnings in the poetics and ideology of Dostoevsky, a novelist and publicist. It is in this work that the origins of the main literary ideological, thematic and compositional complexes and solutions of Dostoevsky the artist: crime and punishment; voluptuous tyrants and their victims; freedom and money; suffering and love; the shackled “our extraordinary people” and the nobles - “iron noses” and “fly-drags”; the chronicler narrator and the people and events he describes in the spirit of diary confession. In “Notes from the House of the Dead,” the writer received a blessing for his further creative path.

With all the transparency of the artistic-autobiographical relationship between Dostoevsky (author; prototype; imaginary publisher) and Goryanchikov (narrator; character; imaginary memoirist), there is no reason to simplify them. A complex poetic and psychological mechanism is hidden and operates latently here. It has been correctly noted: “Dostoevsky typified his cautious fate” (Zakharov). This allowed him to remain in “Notes...” himself, the unconditional Dostoevsky, and at the same time, in principle, following the example of Pushkin’s Belkin, not to be him. The advantage of such a creative “double world” is the freedom of artistic thought, which, however, comes from actually documented, historically confirmed sources.

The ideological and artistic significance of “Notes from the House of the Dead” seems immeasurable, and the questions raised in them are innumerable. This is - without exaggeration - a kind of poetic universe of Dostoevsky, a short edition of his complete confession about man. Here is an indirect summary of the colossal spiritual experience of a genius who lived for four years “in a heap” with people from the people, robbers, murderers, vagabonds, when, without receiving the proper creative outlet, “inner work was in full swing,” and rare, from time to time, fragmentary entries in the “Siberian Notebook” only fueled the passion for full-blooded literary pursuits.

Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov thinks on the scale of the entire geographically and nationally great Russia. A paradox arises in the image of space. Behind the prison fence (“palami”) of the House of the Dead, the outlines of an immense power appear in dotted lines: the Danube, Taganrog, Starodubye, Chernigov, Poltava, Riga, St. Petersburg, Moscow, “a village near Moscow,” Kursk, Dagestan, the Caucasus, Perm, Siberia, Tyumen, Tobolsk , Irtysh, Omsk, Kyrgyz “free Steppe” (in Dostoevsky’s dictionary this word is written with a capital letter), Ust-Kamenogorsk, Eastern Siberia, Nerchinsk, Petropavlovsk port. Accordingly, for sovereign thinking, America, the Black (Red) Sea, Mount Vesuvius, the island of Sumatra and, indirectly, France and Germany are mentioned. The narrator's living contact with the East is emphasized (oriental motifs of the “Steppe”, Muslim countries). This is consonant with the multi-ethnic and multi-confessional character of “Notes...”. The prison artel consists of Great Russians (including Siberians), Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Kalmyks, Tatars, “Circassians” - Lezgins, Chechens. Baklushin's story depicts the Russian-Baltic Germans. Named and, to one degree or another, active in “Notes from the House of the Dead” are the Kyrgyz (Kazakhs), “Muslims,” Chukhonka, Armenian, Turks, Gypsies, Frenchman, Frenchwoman. The poetically determined scattering and cohesion of topoi and ethnic groups has its own, already “novelistic” expressive logic. Not only is the House of the Dead part of Russia, but Russia is also part of the House of the Dead.

The main spiritual conflict of Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov is connected with the theme of Russia: bewilderment and pain in the face of the fact of the class alienation of the people from the noble intelligentsia, its best part. The chapter “Claim” contains the key to understanding what happened to the narrator-character and the author of the tragedy. Their attempt to stand in solidarity on the side of the rebels was rejected with deadly categoricality: they are - under no circumstances and never - “comrades” for their people. Exit from hard labor resolved the most painful problem for all prisoners: de jure and de facto, it was an end to prison bondage. The ending of “Notes from the House of the Dead” is bright and uplifting: “Freedom, new life, resurrection from the dead... What a glorious moment!” But the problem of separation from the people, not provided for by any legal codes in Russia, but which pierced Dostoevsky’s heart forever (“the robber taught me a lot” - Notebook 1875-1876), remained. It gradually - in the writer’s desire to solve it at least for himself - democratized the direction of Dostoevsky’s creative development and ultimately led him to a kind of pochvennik populism.

A modern researcher successfully calls “Notes from the House of the Dead” “a book about the people” (Tunimanov). Russian literature before Dostoevsky did not know anything like this. The central position of the folk theme in the conceptual basis of the book forces us to take it into account in the first place. “Notes...” testified to Dostoevsky’s enormous success in understanding the personality of the people. The content of “Notes from the House of the Dead” is not at all limited to what Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov personally saw and personally experienced. The other, no less significant half is what came to “Notes...” from the environment that closely surrounded the author-narrator, orally, “voiced” (and what the corpus of notes from the “Siberian Notebook” reminds of).

Folk storytellers, jokers, wits, “Conversations Petrovichi” and other Chrysostoms played an invaluable “co-author” role in the artistic concept and implementation of “Notes from the House of the Dead”. Without what I heard and directly adopted from them, the book - in the form it is - would not have taken place. Prison stories, or “chatter” (Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov’s censorship-neutralizing expression) recreate the living – as if according to the dictionary of a certain cautious Vladimir Dahl – charm of popular colloquial speech of the mid-nineteenth century. The masterpiece inside “Notes from the House of the Dead,” the story “Shark’s Husband,” no matter how stylized we recognize it, is based on everyday folk prose of the highest artistic and psychological merit. In fact, this brilliant interpretation of an oral folk tale is akin to Pushkin’s “Fairy Tales” and Gogol’s “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.” The same can be said regarding Baklushin’s fabulous romantic confession story. Of exceptional importance for the book are the constant narrative references to rumors, rumors, rumors, visits - grains of everyday folklore. With appropriate reservations, “Notes from the House of the Dead” should be considered a book, to a certain extent, told by the people, “brothers in misfortune,” so great is the proportion of colloquial tradition, legends, stories, and momentary living words in it.

Dostoevsky was one of the first in our literature to outline the types and varieties of folk storytellers, and cited stylized (and improved by him) examples of their oral creativity. The House of the Dead, which, among other things, was also a “house of folklore,” taught the writer to distinguish between storytellers: “realists” (Baklushin, Shishkov, Sirotkin), “comedians” and “buffoons” (Skuratov), ​​“psychologists” and “anecdotes” ( Shapkin), whipping “veils” (Luchka). For Dostoevsky the novelist, the analytical study of the convict “Conversations of the Petrovichs” could not have been more useful; the lexical and characterological experience that was concentrated and poetically processed in “Notes from the House of the Dead” and subsequently fed his narrative skills came in handy (Chronicler, biographer of the Karamazovs, writer in the Diary, etc.).

Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov equally listens to his convicts - “good” and “bad”, “near” and “distant”, “famous” and “ordinary”, “living” and “dead”. In his “class” soul there are no hostile, “lordly” or disgusting feelings towards his fellow commoner. On the contrary, he reveals a Christian-sympathetic, truly “comradely” and “brotherly” attention to the mass of people under arrest. Attention, extraordinary in its ideological and psychological purpose and ultimate goals - through the prism of the people, to explain oneself, and a person in general, and the principles of his life. This was caught by Ap. A. Grigoriev immediately after the publication of “Notes from the House of the Dead”: their author, the critic noted, “through a painful psychological process reached the point that in the “House of the Dead” he completely merged with the people...” ( Grigoriev Ap. A. Lit. criticism. M., 1967. P. 483).

Dostoevsky did not write a dispassionately objectified chronicle of hard labor, but a confessional-epic and, moreover, “Christian” and “edifying” story about “the most gifted, the most powerful people of all our people,” about its “mighty forces,” which in the House of the Dead “died in vain.” " In the poetic folk history of “Notes from the House of the Dead,” samples of most of the main characters of the late Dostoevsky artist were expressed: “soft-hearted,” “kind,” “persistent,” “nice” and “sincere” (Aley); indigenous Great Russian, “precious” and “full of fire and life” (Baklushin); “Kazan orphan”, “quiet and meek”, but capable of rebellion in extremes (Sirotkin); “the most decisive, the most fearless of all convicts,” heroic in potential (Petrov); in Avvakum’s style, stoically suffering “for the faith,” “meek and meek like a child,” a schismatic rebel (“grandfather”); “spidery” (Gazin); artistic (Potseykin); “superman” of hard labor (Orlov) - the entire socio-psychological collection of human types revealed in “Notes from the House of the Dead” cannot be listed. In the end, one thing remains important: the characterological studies of the Russian prison revealed to the writer the horizonless spiritual world of a person from the people. On these empirical grounds, Dostoevsky’s novelistic and journalistic thought was updated and affirmed. The internal creative rapprochement with the folk element, which began in the era of the House of the Dead, brought it to the formulated by the writer in 1871 “ law turn to nationality."

The historical merits of the author of “Notes from the House of the Dead” to Russian ethnological culture will be infringed if we do not pay special attention to some aspects of folk life that found their discoverer and first interpreter in Dostoevsky.

The chapters “Performance” and “Convict Animals” are given a special ideological and aesthetic status in “Notes...”. They depict the life and customs of prisoners in an environment close to natural, primordial, i.e. careless folk activities. The essay on the “people's theater” (the term was invented by Dostoevsky and entered the circulation of folklore and theater studies), which formed the core of the famous eleventh chapter of “Notes from the House of the Dead”, is priceless. This is the only such complete (“reporting”) and competent description of the phenomenon of folk theater of the 19th century in Russian literature and ethnography. - an indispensable and classic source on Russian theatrical history.

The drawing of the composition “Notes from the House of the Dead” is like a convict chain. The shackles are the heavy, melancholic emblem of the House of the Dead. But the chain arrangement of chapter links in the book is asymmetrical. The chain, consisting of 21 links, is divided in half by the middle (unpaired) eleventh chapter. In the main weak-plot architecture of Notes from the House of the Dead, chapter eleven is out of the ordinary, compositionally, highlighted. Dostoevsky poetically endowed her with enormous life-affirming power. This is the pre-programmed climax of the story. The writer pays tribute here to the spiritual power and beauty of the people with all the measure of his talent. In a joyful impulse towards the bright and eternal, the soul of Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov, jubilantly, merges with the soul of the people (actors and spectators). The principle of human freedom and the inalienable right to it triumphs. Folk art is set as a model, as the highest authorities in Russia can verify: “This is Kamarinskaya in all its scope, and it would really be good if Glinka even accidentally heard it in our prison.”

Behind the prison palisade, its own, so to speak, “prison-convict” civilization has developed - a direct reflection, first of all, of the traditional culture of the Russian peasant. Usually the chapter on animals is viewed from a stereotypical angle: our smaller brothers share the fate of slaves with the prisoners, figuratively and symbolically complement, duplicate and shade it. This is undeniably true. The animalistic pages really correlate with the bestial principles in people from the House of the Dead and beyond. But the idea of ​​external similarity between human and bestial is alien to Dostoevsky. Both in the bestiary plots of “Notes from the House of the Dead” are connected by ties of natural-historical kinship. The narrator does not follow Christian traditions, which prescribe to see chimerical similarities of the divine or the devil behind the real properties of creatures. He is entirely at the mercy of healthy, this-worldly folk-peasant ideas about animals that are everyday close to people and about unity with them. The poetry of the chapter “Convict Animals” lies in the chaste simplicity of the story about a man of the people, taken in his eternal relationship with animals (horse, dog, goat and eagle); relationships, respectively: loving-economic, utilitarian-self-dealing, amusing-carnival and mercifully respectful. The bestiary chapter is involved in a single “passive psychological process" and completes the picture of the tragedy of life in the space of the House of the Dead.

Many books have been written about Russian prison. From “The Life of Archpriest Avvakum” to the grandiose paintings of A.I. Solzhenitsyn and camp stories by V.T. Shalamov. But “Notes from the House of the Dead” remained and will remain fundamental in this literary series. They are like an immortal parable or a providential mythologem, a certain omniscient archetype from Russian literature and history. What could be more unfair than to look for them in the days of the so-called “the lie of Dostoevschina” (Kirpotin)!

A book about Dostoevsky’s great, albeit “unintentional” closeness to the people, about his kind, intercessory and infinitely sympathetic attitude towards them - “Notes from the House of the Dead” is pristinely imbued with a “Christian human-folk” view ( Grigoriev Ap. A. Lit. criticism. P. 503) to an unsettled world. This is the secret of their perfection and charm.

Vladimirtsev V.P. Notes from the House of the Dead // Dostoevsky: Works, letters, documents: Dictionary-reference book. St. Petersburg, 2008. pp. 70-74.

“Notes from the House of the Dead” is the pinnacle work of Dostoevsky’s mature non-novel creativity. The sketch story “Notes from the House of the Dead,” whose life material is based on the impressions of the writer’s four-year hard labor imprisonment in Omsk, occupies a special place both in the work of Dostoevsky and in Russian literature of the mid-19th century.

Being dramatic and sorrowful in its themes and life material, “Notes from the House of the Dead” is one of the most harmonious, perfect, “Pushkin” works of Dostoevsky. The innovative nature of “Notes from the House of the Dead” was realized in the synthetic and multi-genre form of an essay story, approaching the organization of the whole to the Book (Bible). The way of telling the story, the nature of the narration from the inside overcomes the tragedy of the event outline of the “notes” and leads the reader to the light of the “true Christian”, according to L.N. Tolstoy, a view of the world, the fate of Russia and the biography of the main narrator, indirectly related to the biography of Dostoevsky himself. “Notes from the House of the Dead” is a book about the fate of Russia in the unity of specific historical and metahistorical aspects, about the spiritual journey of Goryanchikov, like Dante’s wanderer in the “Divine Comedy,” who, through the power of creativity and love, overcomes the “dead” principles of Russian life and finds a spiritual fatherland ( House). Unfortunately, the acute historical and social relevance of the problems of “Notes from the House of the Dead” overshadowed its artistic perfection, innovation of this type of prose and moral and philosophical uniqueness from both contemporaries and researchers of the 20th century. Modern literary criticism, despite the huge number of private empirical works on the problems and understanding of the socio-historical material of the book, is taking only the first steps towards studying the unique nature of the artistic integrity of Notes from the House of the Dead, poetics, innovation of the author’s position and the nature of intertextuality.

This article gives a modern interpretation of “Notes from the House of the Dead” through an analysis of the narrative, understood as a process of implementing the author’s holistic activity. The author of “Notes from the House of the Dead”, as a kind of dynamic integrating principle, realizes his position in constant oscillations between two opposite (and never fully realized) possibilities - to enter inside the world he created, striving to interact with the heroes as with living people (this technique is called “getting used to it”), and at the same time, distance himself as much as possible from the work he created, emphasizing the fictionality, “composition” of the characters and situations (a technique called “alienation” by M. M. Bakhtin).

Historical and literary situation in the early 1860s. with its active diffusion of genres, giving rise to the need for hybrid, mixed forms, made it possible to realize in “Notes from the House of the Dead” an epic of folk life, which with some degree of convention can be called a “sketch story”. As in any story, the movement of artistic meaning in “Notes from the House of the Dead” is realized not in the plot, but in the interaction of different narrative plans (speech of the main narrator, oral convict narrators, publisher, rumor).

The very name “Notes from the House of the Dead” belongs not to the person who wrote them (Goryanchikov calls his work “Scenes from the House of the Dead”), but to the publisher. The title seems to have met two voices, two points of view (Goryanchikov’s and the publisher’s), even two semantic principles (the concrete chronicle: “Notes from the House of the Dead” - as an indication of the genre nature - and the symbolic-conceptual formula-oxymoron “The House of the Dead” ).

The figurative formula “The House of the Dead” appears as a unique moment of concentration of the semantic energy of the narrative and at the same time, in the most general form, outlines the intertextual channel in which the author’s value activity will unfold (from the symbolic name of the Russian Empire Necropolis by P.Ya. Chaadaev to allusions to V. F. Odoevsky's stories "The Mockery of a Dead Man", "Ball", "The Living Dead" and more broadly - the theme of dead, spiritless reality in the prose of Russian romanticism and, finally, to the internal controversy with the title of Gogol's poem "Dead Souls"), the oxymoronic nature of such a name as if repeated by Dostoevsky on a different semantic level.

The bitter paradox of Gogol’s name (the immortal soul is declared dead) is contrasted with the internal tension of opposing principles in the definition of “House of the Dead”: “Dead” due to stagnation, lack of freedom, isolation from the big world, and most of all from the unconscious spontaneity of life, but still a “house” “- not only as housing, warmth of the hearth, refuge, sphere of existence, but also as a family, clan, community of people (“strange family”), belonging to one national integrity.

The depth and semantic capacity of the artistic prose of “Notes from the House of the Dead” reveal themselves especially clearly in the introduction about Siberia that opens the introduction. Here is the result of spiritual communication between the provincial publisher and the author of the notes: at the plot-event level, understanding, it would seem, did not take place, however, the structure of the narrative reveals the interaction and gradual penetration of Goryanchikov’s worldview into the publisher’s style.

The publisher, who is also the first reader of “Notes from the House of the Dead,” comprehends the life of the House of the Dead, at the same time looking for the answer to Goryanchikov, moving towards an increasing understanding of him not through the facts and circumstances of life in hard labor, but rather through the process of familiarization with the narrator’s worldview. And the extent of this familiarization and understanding is recorded in Chapter VII of Part Two, in the publisher’s message about the further fate of the prisoner - an imaginary parricide.

But Goryanchikov himself is looking for the key to the people’s soul through the painfully difficult introduction to the unity of people’s life. The reality of the House of the Dead is refracted through different types of consciousness: publisher, A.P. Goryanchikov, Shishkov, telling the story of a ruined girl (chapter “Akulkin’s Husband”); All these ways of perceiving the world look at each other, interact, correct one another, and at their border a new universal vision of the world is born.

The introduction takes a look at Notes from the House of the Dead from the outside; it ends with a description of the publisher's first impression of their reading. It is important that in the publisher’s mind there are both principles that determine the internal tension of the story: this is interest in both the object and the subject of the story.

“Notes from the House of the Dead” is a life story not in the biographical, but rather in the existential sense; it is a story not of survival, but of life in the conditions of the House of the Dead. Two interconnected processes determine the nature of the narrative of “Notes from the House of the Dead”: this is the story of the formation and growth of Goryanchikov’s living soul, which takes place as he comprehends the living, fruitful foundations of national life, revealed in the life of the House of the Dead. The narrator’s spiritual self-knowledge and his comprehension of the folk element occur simultaneously. The compositional structure of “Notes from the House of the Dead” is mainly determined by a change in the narrator’s view - both by the patterns of psychological reflection of reality in his mind, and by the direction of his attention to the phenomena of life.

“Notes from the House of the Dead,” according to the external and internal type of compositional organization, reproduces the annual circle, the circle of life in hard labor, conceptualized as the circle of existence. Of the twenty-two chapters of the book, the first and last open outside the prison; the introduction gives a brief history of Goryanchikov’s life after hard labor. The remaining twenty chapters of the book are structured not as a simple description of convict life, but as a skillful translation of the reader’s vision and perception from external to internal, from everyday to invisible, essential. The first chapter implements the final symbolic formula of “The House of the Dead”, the three chapters following it are called “First Impressions”, which emphasizes the personality of the narrator’s holistic experience. Then two chapters are titled “The First Month,” which continues the chronicle-dynamic inertia of the reader’s perception. Next, three chapters contain a multi-part reference to “new acquaintances,” unusual situations, and colorful characters of the prison. The culmination are two chapters - X and XI (“The Feast of the Nativity of Christ” and “Performance”), and in Chapter X the deceived expectations of the convicts about the failed internal holiday are given, and in the chapter “Performance” the law of the need for personal spiritual and creative participation is revealed in order for the real the holiday took place. The second part contains four of the most tragic chapters with impressions of the hospital, human suffering, executioners, and victims. This part of the book ends with the overheard story “Shark’s Husband,” where the narrator, yesterday’s executioner, turned out to be today’s victim, but never saw the meaning of what happened to him. The next five final chapters give a picture of spontaneous impulses, delusions, external actions without understanding the inner meaning of the characters from the people. The final tenth chapter, “Exit from hard labor,” marks not just the physical acquisition of freedom, but also gives the internal transformation of Goryanchikov with the light of sympathy and understanding of the tragedy of people’s life from the inside.

Based on all that has been said above, the following conclusions can be drawn: the narration in “Notes from the House of the Dead” develops a new type of relationship with the reader; in the essay story, the author’s activity is aimed at shaping the reader’s worldview and is realized through the interaction of the consciousnesses of the publisher, the narrator and oral storytellers from the people, the inhabitants Dead house. The publisher acts as a reader of “Notes from the House of the Dead” and is both the subject and the object of a change in worldview.

The narrator’s word, on the one hand, lives in constant correlation with the opinion of everyone, in other words, with the truth of national life; on the other hand, it is actively addressed to the reader, organizing the integrity of his perception.

The dialogic nature of Goryanchikov’s interaction with the horizons of other narrators is not aimed at their self-determination, as in the novel, but at identifying their position in relation to common life, therefore, in many cases, the narrator’s word interacts with non-personalized voices that help shape his way of seeing.

Gaining a truly epic perspective becomes a form of spiritual overcoming of the disunity in the House of the Dead that the narrator shares with the readers; this epic event determines both the dynamics of the narrative and the genre nature of “Notes from the House of the Dead” as a sketch story.

The dynamics of the narrator’s narrative are entirely determined by the genre nature of the work, subordinated to the implementation of the aesthetic task of the genre: from a generalized view from afar, from a “bird’s eye view” to the development of a specific phenomenon, which is carried out by comparing different points of view and identifying their commonality on the basis of popular perception; further, these developed measures of national consciousness become the property of the reader’s internal spiritual experience. Thus, the point of view acquired in the process of familiarization with the elements of folk life appears in the event of the work as both a means and a goal.

Thus, the introduction from the publisher gives an orientation to the genre, defamiliarizes the figure of the main narrator, Goryanchikov, and makes it possible to show him both from the inside and from the outside, as the subject and object of the story at the same time. The movement of the narrative within “Notes from the House of the Dead” is determined by two interrelated processes: the spiritual formation of Goryanchikov and the self-development of people’s life, to the extent that this is revealed as the hero-narrator comprehends it.

The internal tension of the interaction of individual and collective worldviews is realized in the alternation of the concrete momentary point of view of the narrator-eyewitness and his final point of view, distanced into the future as the time of the creation of “Notes from the House of the Dead,” as well as the point of view of general life, appearing in its specific -everyday version of mass psychology, then in the essential existence of a universal folk whole.

Akelkina E.A. Notes from the House of the Dead // Dostoevsky: Works, letters, documents: Dictionary-reference book. St. Petersburg, 2008. pp. 74-77.

Lifetime publications (editions):

1860—1861 — Russian world. The newspaper is political, social and literary. Edited by A.S. Hieroglyphic. SPb.: Type. F. Stellovsky. Year two. 1860. September 1. No. 67. pp. 1-8. Year three. 1861. January 4. No. 1. P. 1-14 (I. House of the Dead. II. First impressions). January 11. No. 3. P. 49-54 (III. First impressions). The 25th of January. No. 7. P. 129-135 (IV. First impressions).

1861—1862 — . SPb.: Type. E Praca.

1862: January. pp. 321-336. February. pp. 565-597. March. pp. 313-351. May. pp. 291-326. December. pp. 235-249.

1862 —

Second edition: Part one [and only]. SPb.: Type. E. Praca, 1862. 167 p.

1862 — Second edition. SPb.: Publishing house. A.F. Bazunov. Type. I. Ogrizko, 1862. Part one. 269 ​​p. Part two. 198 p.

1863 - SPb.: Type. O.I. Baksta, 1863. - P. 108-124.

1864 — For upper classes of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Second edition, corrected and expanded. Volume one. Epic poetry. SPb.: Type. I. Ogrizko, 1864. - P. 686-700.

1864 — : nach dem Tagebuche eines nach Sibirien Verbannten: nach dem Russischen bearbeitet / herausgegeben von Th. M. Dostojewski. Leipzig: Wolfgang Gerhard, 1864. B. I. 251 s. B.II. 191 s.

1865 — The edition has been reviewed and expanded by the author himself. Publication and property of F. Stellovsky. SPb.: Type. F. Stellovsky, 1865. T. I. P. 70-194.

1865 — In two parts. Third edition, revised and updated with a new chapter. Publication and property of F. Stellovsky. SPb.: Type. F. Stellovsky, 1865. 415 p.

1868 — First [and only] issue. [B.m.], 1868. — Notes from the House of the Dead. Akulkin's husband pp. 80-92.

1869 — For upper classes of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Third edition, significantly revised. Part one. Epic poetry. SPb.: Type. F.S. Sushchinsky, 1869. — Notes from the House of the Dead. Performance. pp. 665-679.

1871 — For upper classes of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Fourth edition, significantly revised. Part one. Epic poetry. SPb.: Type. I.I. Glazunov, 1871. — Notes from the House of the Dead. Performance. pp. 655-670.

1875 — For upper classes of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Fifth edition, significantly revised. Part one. Epic poetry. SPb.: Type. I.I. Glazunov, 1875. — Notes from the House of the Dead. Performance. pp. 611-624.

1875 — Fourth edition. SPb.: Type. br. Panteleev, 1875. Part one. 244 p. Part two. 180 pp.

SPb.: Type. br. Panteleev, 1875. Part one. 244 p. Part two. 180 pp.

1880 — For upper classes of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Sixth edition (printed from the third edition). Part one. Epic poetry. SPb.: Type. I.I. Glazunov, 1879 (in the region - 1880). — Notes from the House of the Dead. Performance. pp. 609-623.

Posthumous edition prepared for publication by A.G. Dostoevsky:

1881 — Fifth edition. St. Petersburg: [Ed. A.G. Dostoevskaya]. Type. Brother. Panteleev, 1881. Part 1. 217 p. Part 2. 160 p.

For a person to consider that he is living, it is not enough for him to simply exist. Something else is needed for life to be truly life. The writer F. M. Dostoevsky believed that one cannot consider oneself alive without freedom. And this idea is reflected in his work “Notes from the House of the Dead.” In it he included his memories and impressions of the life of convicts. The writer himself spent four years in the Omsk prison, where he had the opportunity to study in detail the worldview and life of convicts.

This book is a literary document, which is also sometimes called a fictional memoir. There is not just one plot in it, it is sketches from life, retellings, memories and thoughts. The main character of the story, Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov, killed his wife out of jealousy, and as punishment he spent 10 years in hard labor. He was of a noble family, and convicts of peasant origin treated him with both hostility and reverence. After serving hard labor, Goryanchikov began to earn extra money as a tutor and write down his thoughts about what he saw in hard labor.

From the book you can find out what the life and morals of the prisoners were like, what kind of work they did, how they treated crimes, both their own and those of others. There were three categories of hard labor in terms of difficulty, the author talks about each of them. You can see how the convicts treated faith, their lives, what they were happy about and what they were upset about, how they tried to please themselves with at least something. And the management turned a blind eye to some things.

The author makes sketches from the life of convicts and draws psychological portraits. He talks a lot about what people were like in hard labor, how they lived and how they saw themselves. The writer comes to the conclusion that only with freedom can a person feel alive. Therefore, his work is called “Notes from the House of the Dead”, as a comparison with the fact that in hard labor they do not live, but only exist.

On our website you can download the book “Notes from the House of the Dead” by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky for free and without registration in epub, fb2, pdf format, read the book online or buy the book in the online store.

Notes from the House of the Dead- a work by Fyodor Dostoevsky, consisting of a story of the same name in two parts, as well as several short stories; created in -1861. Created under the impression of imprisonment in the Omsk prison in 1850-1854.

History of creation

The story is documentary in nature and introduces the reader to the life of imprisoned criminals in Siberia in the second half of the 19th century. The writer artistically comprehended everything he saw and experienced during four years of hard labor in Omsk (from to 1854), having been exiled there in the Petrashevites case. The work was created from 1862 to 1862; the first chapters were published in the magazine “Time”.

Plot

The story is told from the perspective of the main character, Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov, a nobleman who found himself in hard labor for 10 years for the murder of his wife. Having killed his wife out of jealousy, Alexander Petrovich himself confessed to the murder, and after serving hard labor, he cut off all ties with relatives and remained in a settlement in the Siberian city of K., leading a secluded life and earning a living by tutoring. One of his few entertainments remains reading and literary sketches about hard labor. Actually, the author calls the “living House of the Dead”, which gave the title of the story, the prison where the convicts are serving their sentences, and calls his notes “Scenes from the House of the Dead.”

Finding himself in prison, the nobleman Goryanchikov acutely experiences his imprisonment, which is aggravated by the unusual peasant environment. Most of the prisoners do not accept him as an equal, at the same time despising him for his impracticality, disgust, and respecting his nobility. Having survived the first shock, Goryanchikov begins to study with interest the life of the inhabitants of the prison, discovering for himself the “common people”, their low and sublime sides.

Goryanchikov falls into the so-called “second category”, into the fortress. In total, in the Siberian penal servitude in the 19th century there were three categories: the first (in the mines), the second (in the fortresses) and the third (factory). It was believed that the severity of hard labor decreases from the first to the third category (see hard labor). However, according to Goryanchikov, the second category was the strictest, since it was under military control, and the prisoners were always under surveillance. Many of the second-class convicts spoke in favor of the first and third classes. In addition to these categories, along with ordinary prisoners, in the fortress where Goryanchikov was imprisoned, there was a “special department” in which prisoners were assigned to hard labor indefinitely for especially serious crimes. The “special department” in the code of laws was described as follows: “A special department is established at such and such a prison for the most important criminals, pending the opening of the most severe hard labor in Siberia.”

The story does not have a coherent plot and appears before readers in the form of small sketches, however, arranged in chronological order. The chapters of the story contain the author’s personal impressions, stories from the lives of other convicts, psychological sketches and deep philosophical reflections.

The life and morals of prisoners, the relationships of convicts to each other, faith and crimes are described in detail. From the story you can find out what jobs convicts were hired for, how they earned money, how they brought wine into the prison, what they dreamed about, how they had fun, how they treated their bosses and work. What was prohibited, what was allowed, what the authorities turned a blind eye to, how the convicts were punished. The national composition of convicts, their attitude towards imprisonment and towards prisoners of other nationalities and classes is considered.

Characters

• Goryanchikov Alexander Petrovich is the main character of the story, on whose behalf the story is told.
• Akim Akimych is one of the four former nobles, a comrade of Goryanchikov, a senior prisoner in the barracks. Sentenced to 12 years for shooting a Caucasian prince who set fire to his fortress. An extremely pedantic and stupidly well-behaved person.
• Gazin is a kissing convict, a wine merchant, a Tatar, the most powerful convict in the prison. He was famous for committing crimes, killing small innocent children, enjoying their fear and torment.
• Sirotkin is a 23-year-old former recruit who was sent to hard labor for the murder of his commander.
• Dutov is a former soldier who rushed at the guard officer in order to delay the punishment (being driven through the ranks) and received an even longer sentence.
• Orlov is a strong-willed killer, completely fearless in the face of punishment and testing.
• Nurra is a highlander, Lezgin, cheerful, intolerant of theft, drunkenness, pious, a favorite of the convicts.
• Alei is a Dagestani, 22 years old, who was sent to hard labor with his older brothers for attacking an Armenian merchant. A neighbor on the bunk of Goryanchikov, who became close friends with him and taught Aley to read and write in Russian.
• Isai Fomich is a Jew who was sent to hard labor for murder. Moneylender and jeweler. He was on friendly terms with Goryanchikov.
• Osip, a smuggler who elevated smuggling to the level of an art, carried wine into the prison. He was terrified of punishment and many times swore off smuggling, but he still broke down. Most of the time he worked as a cook, preparing separate (not official) food (including for Goryanchikov) for the prisoners’ money.
• Sushilov is a prisoner who changed his name at the stage with another prisoner: for a silver ruble and a red shirt, he exchanged his settlement for eternal hard labor. Served Goryanchikov.
• A-v - one of the four nobles. He received 10 years of hard labor for false denunciation, from which he wanted to make money. Hard labor did not lead him to repentance, but corrupted him, turning him into an informer and a scoundrel. The author uses this character to depict the complete moral decline of man. One of the escape participants.
• Nastasya Ivanovna is a widow who selflessly takes care of the convicts.
• Petrov is a former soldier who ended up in hard labor after stabbing a colonel during training because he unfairly hit him. He is characterized as the most determined convict. He sympathized with Goryanchikov, but treated him as a dependent person, a wonder of the prison.
• Baklushin - ended up in hard labor for the murder of a German who had betrothed his bride. Organizer of a theater in a prison.
• Luchka is a Ukrainian, he was sent to hard labor for the murder of six people, and while in prison he killed the head of the prison.
• Ustyantsev is a former soldier; to avoid punishment, he drank wine infused with tobacco to induce consumption, from which he later died.
• Mikhailov is a convict who died in a military hospital from consumption.
• Zherebyatnikov is a lieutenant, an executor with sadistic tendencies.
• Smekalov - lieutenant, executor, who was popular among convicts.
• Shishkov is a prisoner who was sent to hard labor for the murder of his wife (the story “Akulkin’s Husband”).
• Kulikov - gypsy, horse thief, guarded veterinarian. One of the escape participants.
• Elkin is a Siberian who was imprisoned for counterfeiting. A cautious veterinarian who quickly took away his practice from Kulikov.
• The story features an unnamed fourth nobleman, a frivolous, eccentric, unreasonable and non-cruel man, falsely accused of murdering his father, acquitted and released from hard labor only ten years later. Dmitry's prototype from the novel The Brothers Karamazov.

Part one

• I. House of the Dead
• II. First impressions
• III. First impressions
• IV. First impressions
• V. First month
• VI. First month
• VII. New acquaintances. Petrov
• VIII. Determined people. Luchka
• IX. Isai Fomich. Bathhouse. Baklushin's story
• X. Feast of the Nativity of Christ
• XI. Performance

Part two

• I. Hospital
• II. Continuation
• III. Continuation
• IV. Akulkin's husband Story
• V. Summer time
• VI. Convict animals
• VII. Claim
• VIII. Comrades
• IX. The escape
• X. Exit from hard labor

Links

Part one

Introduction

In the remote regions of Siberia, among the steppes, mountains or impenetrable forests, you occasionally come across small towns, with one, many with two thousand inhabitants, wooden, nondescript, with two churches - one in the city, the other in the cemetery - towns that look more like good village near Moscow than the city. They are usually quite sufficiently equipped with police officers, assessors and all other subaltern ranks. In general, in Siberia, despite the cold, it is extremely warm. People live simple, illiberal lives; the order is old, strong, sanctified for centuries. The officials who rightly play the role of the Siberian nobility are either natives, inveterate Siberians, or visitors from Russia, mostly from the capitals, seduced by the non-credited salaries, double runs and tempting hopes for the future. Among them, those who know how to solve the riddle of life almost always remain in Siberia and take root in it with pleasure. They subsequently bear rich and sweet fruits. But others, frivolous people who do not know how to solve the riddle of life, will soon become bored with Siberia and ask themselves with longing: why did they come to it? They eagerly serve out their legal term of service, three years, and at the end of it they immediately bother about their transfer and return home, scolding Siberia and laughing at it. They are wrong: not only from an official point of view, but even from many points of view, one can be blissful in Siberia. The climate is excellent; there are many remarkably rich and hospitable merchants; there are many extremely wealthy foreigners. The young ladies bloom with roses and are moral to the last extreme. The game flies through the streets and stumbles upon the hunter. An unnatural amount of champagne is drunk. The caviar is amazing. The harvest happens in other places as early as fifteen... In general, the land is blessed. You just need to know how to use it. In Siberia they know how to use it.

In one of these cheerful and self-satisfied towns, with the sweetest people, the memory of which will remain indelible in my heart, I met Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov, a settler who was born in Russia as a nobleman and landowner, then became a second-class exile for the murder of his wife, and, after the expiration of the ten-year term of hard labor prescribed for him by law, he humbly and quietly lived out his life in the town of K. as a settler. He was actually assigned to one suburban volost; but he lived in the city, having the opportunity to earn at least some food in it by teaching children. In Siberian cities one often encounters teachers from exiled settlers; they are not disdained. They teach mainly the French language, which is so necessary in the field of life and which, without them, in the remote regions of Siberia they would have no idea. The first time I met Alexander Petrovich was in the house of an old, honored and hospitable official, Ivan Ivanovich Gvozdikov, who had five daughters of different ages who showed wonderful hopes. Alexander Petrovich gave them lessons four times a week, thirty silver kopecks per lesson. His appearance interested me. He was an extremely pale and thin man, not yet old, about thirty-five, small and frail. He was always dressed very cleanly, in a European style. If you spoke to him, he looked at you extremely intently and attentively, listened to every word of yours with strict politeness, as if he were pondering it, as if you asked him a task with your question or wanted to extract some secret from him, and, finally, he answered clearly and briefly, but weighing every word of his answer so much that you suddenly felt awkward for some reason and you yourself finally rejoiced at the end of the conversation. I then asked Ivan Ivanovich about him and found out that Goryanchikov lives impeccably and morally and that otherwise Ivan Ivanovich would not have invited him for his daughters, but that he is a terrible unsociable, hides from everyone, is extremely learned, reads a lot, but says very little and that in general it is quite difficult to talk to him. Others argued that he was positively crazy, although they found that in essence this was not such an important flaw, that many of the honorary members of the city were ready to favor Alexander Petrovich in every possible way, that he could even be useful, write requests, etc. They believed that he must have decent relatives in Russia, maybe not even the last people, but they knew that from the very exile he stubbornly cut off all relations with them - in a word, he was harming himself. In addition, we all knew his story, we knew that he killed his wife in the first year of his marriage, killed out of jealousy and denounced himself (which greatly facilitated his punishment). Such crimes are always looked upon as misfortunes and regretted. But, despite all this, the eccentric stubbornly avoided everyone and appeared in people only to give lessons.

At first I didn't pay much attention to him; but, I don’t know why, little by little he began to interest me. There was something mysterious about him. There was not the slightest opportunity to talk to him. Of course, he always answered my questions, and even with such an air as if he considered this his primary duty; but after his answers I somehow felt burdened to question him longer; and after such conversations, his face always showed some kind of suffering and fatigue. I remember walking with him one fine summer evening from Ivan Ivanovich. Suddenly I took it into my head to invite him to my place for a minute to smoke a cigarette. I cannot describe the horror that was expressed on his face; he was completely lost, began to mutter some incoherent words and suddenly, looking angrily at me, he started running in the opposite direction. I was even surprised. Since then, whenever he met me, he looked at me as if with some kind of fear. But I didn’t calm down; I was drawn to him by something, and a month later, out of the blue, I went to see Goryanchikov. Of course, I acted stupidly and indelicately. He lived on the very edge of the city, with an old bourgeois woman who had a daughter who was sick with consumption, and that daughter had an illegitimate daughter, a child of about ten years old, a pretty and cheerful girl. Alexander Petrovich was sitting with her and teaching her to read the minute I came into his room. When he saw me, he became so confused, as if I had caught him committing some crime. He was completely confused, jumped up from his chair and looked at me with all his eyes. We finally sat down; he closely watched my every glance, as if he suspected some special mysterious meaning in each of them. I guessed that he was suspicious to the point of madness. He looked at me with hatred, almost asking: “Are you going to leave here soon?” I talked to him about our town, about current news; he remained silent and smiled evilly; It turned out that he not only did not know the most ordinary, well-known city news, but was not even interested in knowing them. Then I started talking about our region, about its needs; he listened to me in silence and looked into my eyes so strangely that I finally felt ashamed of our conversation. However, I almost teased him with new books and magazines; I had them in my hands, fresh from the post office, and I offered them to him, not yet cut. He cast a greedy glance at them, but immediately changed his mind and declined the offer, citing lack of time. Finally, I said goodbye to him and, leaving him, I felt that some unbearable weight had been lifted from my heart. I was ashamed and it seemed extremely stupid to pester a person whose main goal was to hide as far away from the whole world as possible. But the job was done. I remember that I noticed almost no books on him, and, therefore, it was unfair to say about him that he reads a lot. However, driving past his windows twice, very late at night, I noticed a light in them. What did he do while he sat until dawn? Didn't he write? And if so, what exactly?

Circumstances removed me from our town for three months. Returning home in the winter, I learned that Alexander Petrovich died in the fall, died in solitude and never even called a doctor to him. The town has almost forgotten about him. His apartment was empty. I immediately met the owner of the deceased, intending to find out from her: what was her tenant especially doing and did he write anything? For two kopecks she brought me a whole basket of papers left behind by the deceased. The old woman admitted that she had already used up two notebooks. She was a gloomy and silent woman, from whom it was difficult to get anything worthwhile. She couldn’t tell me anything particularly new about her tenant. According to her, he almost never did anything and for months at a time did not open a book or pick up a pen; but whole nights he walked back and forth across the room and kept thinking about something, and sometimes talking to himself; that he loved and caressed her granddaughter, Katya, very much, especially since he found out that her name was Katya, and that on Katerina’s day every time he went to serve a memorial service for someone. He could not tolerate guests; he only came out of the yard to teach the children; he even glanced sideways at her, the old woman, when she came, once a week, to tidy up his room at least a little, and almost never said a single word to her for three whole years. I asked Katya: does she remember her teacher? She looked at me silently, turned to the wall and began to cry. Therefore, this man could at least force someone to love him.

I took his papers and sorted through them all day. Three quarters of these papers were empty, insignificant scraps or student exercises from copybooks. But there was also one notebook, quite voluminous, finely written and unfinished, perhaps abandoned and forgotten by the author himself. This was a description, albeit incoherent, of the ten years of hard labor endured by Alexander Petrovich. In places this description was interrupted by some other story, some strange, terrible memories, sketched unevenly, convulsively, as if under some kind of compulsion. I re-read these passages several times and was almost convinced that they were written in madness. But the convict notes - “Scenes from the House of the Dead,” as he himself calls them somewhere in his manuscript, seemed to me not entirely uninteresting. A completely new world, hitherto unknown, the strangeness of other facts, some special notes about the lost people captivated me, and I read something with curiosity. Of course, I could be wrong. I first select two or three chapters for testing; let the public judge...

I. House of the Dead

Our fort stood on the edge of the fortress, right next to the ramparts. It happened that you looked through the cracks of the fence into the light of God: wouldn’t you see at least something? - and all you will see is the edge of the sky and a high earthen rampart overgrown with weeds, and sentries walking back and forth along the rampart day and night, and you will immediately think that whole years will pass, and you will go in the same way to look through the cracks of the fence and you will see the same rampart, the same sentries and the same small edge of the sky, not the sky that is above the prison, but another, distant, free sky. Imagine a large courtyard, two hundred steps in length and one and a half hundred steps in width, all surrounded in a circle, in the form of an irregular hexagon, by a high fence, that is, a fence of high pillars (pals), dug deep into the ground, firmly leaning against each other with ribs, fastened with transverse planks and pointed at the top: this is the outer fence of the fort. In one of the sides of the fence there is a strong gate, always locked, always guarded day and night by sentries; they were unlocked upon request to be released to work. Behind these gates there was a bright, free world, people lived like everyone else. But on this side of the fence they imagined that world as some kind of impossible fairy tale. It had its own special world, unlike anything else; it had its own special laws, its own costumes, its own morals and customs, and a living dead house, life - like nowhere else, and special people. It is this special corner that I begin to describe.

As you enter the fence, you see several buildings inside it. On both sides of the wide courtyard there are two long one-story log houses. These are barracks. Prisoners housed by category live here. Then, in the depths of the fence, there is another similar log house: this is a kitchen, divided into two artels; further on there is another building where cellars, barns, and sheds are located under one roof. The middle of the yard is empty and forms a flat, fairly large area. Here the prisoners are lined up, verification and roll call take place in the morning, at noon and in the evening, sometimes several more times a day - judging by the suspiciousness of the guards and their ability to quickly count. All around, between the buildings and the fence, there is still quite a large space. Here, at the back of the buildings, some of the prisoners, more unsociable and darker in character, like to walk around during non-working hours, closed from all eyes, and think their little thoughts. Meeting them during these walks, I loved to peer into their gloomy, branded faces and guess what they were thinking about. There was one exile whose favorite pastime in his free time was counting pali. There were a thousand and a half of them, and he had them all in his account and in mind. Each fire meant a day for him; every day he counted one pala and thus, from the remaining number of uncounted pali, he could clearly see how many days he still had left to stay in the prison before the deadline for work. He was sincerely happy when he finished some side of the hexagon. He still had to wait for many years; but in prison there was time to learn patience. I once saw how a prisoner, who had been in hard labor for twenty years and was finally released, said goodbye to his comrades. There were people who remembered how he entered the prison for the first time, young, carefree, not thinking about his crime or his punishment. He came out as a gray-haired old man, with a gloomy and sad face. Silently he walked around all our six barracks. Entering each barracks, he prayed to the icon and then bowed low, at the waist, to his comrades, asking them not to remember him unkindly. I also remember how one day a prisoner, formerly a wealthy Siberian peasant, was called to the gate one evening. Six months before this, he received the news that his ex-wife had gotten married, and he was deeply saddened. Now she herself drove up to the prison, called him and gave him alms. They talked for two minutes, both cried and said goodbye forever. I saw his face when he returned to the barracks... Yes, in this place one could learn patience.

When it got dark, we were all taken into the barracks, where we were locked up for the whole night. It was always difficult for me to return from the yard to our barracks. It was a long, low and stuffy room, dimly lit by tallow candles, with a heavy, suffocating smell. Now I don’t understand how I survived in it for ten years. I had three boards on the bunk: that was all my space. About thirty people were accommodated on these same bunks in one of our rooms. In winter they locked it early; We had to wait four hours until everyone fell asleep. And before that - noise, din, laughter, curses, the sound of chains, smoke and soot, shaved heads, branded faces, patchwork dresses, everything - cursed, defamed... yes, a tenacious man! Man is a creature that gets used to everything, and I think this is the best definition of him.

There were only two hundred and fifty of us in the prison - the number was almost constant. Some came, others completed their terms and left, others died. And what kind of people were not here! I think every province, every strip of Russia had its representatives here. There were also foreigners, there were several exiles even from the Caucasian highlanders. All this was divided according to the degree of crime, and therefore, according to the number of years determined for the crime. It must be assumed that there was no crime that did not have its representative here. The main basis of the entire prison population were exiled convicts of the civil category ( strongly convicts, as the prisoners themselves naively pronounced). These were criminals, completely deprived of all the rights of fortune, cut off in chunks from society, with their faces branded as an eternal testimony of their rejection. They were sent to work for periods of eight to twelve years and then were sent somewhere in the Siberian volosts as settlers. There were also criminals of the military category, who were not deprived of their status rights, as in general in Russian military prison companies. They were sent for a short period of time; upon completion, they turned back to where they came from, to become soldiers, to the Siberian line battalions. Many of them almost immediately returned back to prison for secondary important crimes, but not for short periods, but for twenty years. This category was called "always". But the "always" were still not completely deprived of all the rights of the state. Finally, there was another special category of the most terrible criminals, mainly military ones, quite numerous. It was called the “special department”. Criminals were sent here from all over Rus'. They themselves considered themselves eternal and did not know the duration of their work. By law, they had to double and triple their work hours. They were kept in prison until the most severe hard labor was opened in Siberia. “You get a prison term, but we get penal servitude along the way,” they said to other prisoners. I heard later that this discharge was destroyed. In addition, civil order at our fortress was destroyed, and one general military prison company was established. Of course, along with this, the management also changed. I am describing, therefore, the old days, things that are long past and past...

It was a long time ago; I dream of all this now, as if in a dream. I remember how I entered the prison. It was in the evening in December. It was already getting dark; people were returning from work; were preparing for verification. The mustachioed non-commissioned officer finally opened the doors for me to this strange house in which I had to stay for so many years, endure so many sensations about which, without actually experiencing them, I could not even have an approximate idea. For example, I could never imagine: what is terrible and painful about the fact that during all ten years of my penal servitude I will never, not even for a single minute, be alone? At work, always under escort, at home with two hundred comrades, and never, never alone! However, did I still have to get used to this!

There were casual killers and professional killers, robbers and atamans of robbers. There were simply mazuriks and industrialist vagabonds for found money or for the Stolevo part. There were also those about whom it was difficult to decide: why, it seems, could they come here? Meanwhile, everyone had their own story, vague and heavy, like the fumes of yesterday’s intoxication. In general, they talked little about their past, did not like to talk and, apparently, tried not to think about the past. I even knew of them murderers who were so cheerful, so never thinking, that you could bet that their conscience never reproached them. But there were also gloomy faces, almost always silent. In general, rarely did anyone tell their life, and curiosity was not in fashion, somehow not in custom, not accepted. So is it possible that occasionally someone will start talking out of idleness, while someone else listens calmly and gloomily. No one here could surprise anyone. “We are a literate people!” - they often said with some strange complacency. I remember how one day a drunken robber (you could sometimes get drunk in penal servitude) began to tell how he stabbed a five-year-old boy to death, how he first deceived him with a toy, took him somewhere into an empty barn, and stabbed him there. The entire barracks, which had hitherto laughed at his jokes, screamed like one man, and the robber was forced to remain silent; The barracks screamed not out of indignation, but because there was no need to talk about this speak; because talk about it not accepted. By the way, I note that these people were truly literate, and not even figuratively, but literally. Probably more than half of them could read and write. In what other place, where the Russian people gather in large masses, will you separate from them a group of two hundred and fifty people, half of whom would be literate? I heard later that someone began to deduce from similar data that literacy is ruining the people. This is a mistake: there are completely different reasons; although one cannot but agree that literacy develops arrogance among the people. But this is not a drawback at all. All categories differed in dress: some had half their jackets dark brown and the other gray, and the same on their trousers - one leg was gray and the other dark brown. Once, at work, a Kalash-wielding girl approached the prisoners, peered at me for a long time and then suddenly burst out laughing. “Ugh, how nice isn’t it! - she shouted, “there was not enough gray cloth, and there was not enough black cloth!” There were also those whose entire jacket was of the same gray cloth, but only the sleeves were dark brown. The head was also shaved in different ways: for some, half of the head was shaved along the skull, for others across.

At first glance one could notice some sharp commonality in this whole strange family; even the harshest, most original personalities, who reigned over others involuntarily, tried to fall into the general tone of the entire prison. In general, I will say that all this people, with a few few exceptions of inexhaustibly cheerful people who enjoyed universal contempt for this, were a gloomy, envious people, terribly vain, boastful, touchy and extremely formalist. The ability not to be surprised by anything was the greatest virtue. Everyone was obsessed with how to present themselves. But often the most arrogant look was replaced with lightning speed by the most cowardly one. There were some truly strong people; they were simple and did not grimace. But a strange thing: of these real, strong people, several were vain to the extreme, almost to the point of illness. In general, vanity and appearance were in the foreground. The majority were corrupted and terribly sneaky. Gossip and gossip were continuous: it was hell, pitch darkness. But no one dared to rebel against the internal regulations and accepted customs of the prison; everyone obeyed. There were characters that were sharply outstanding, who obeyed with difficulty, with effort, but still obeyed. Those who came to the prison were too high-handed, too out of step with the standards of freedom, so that in the end they committed their crimes as if not of their own accord, as if they themselves did not know why, as if in delirium, in a state of confusion; often out of vanity, excited to the highest degree. But with us they were immediately besieged, despite the fact that others, before arriving at the prison, terrorized entire villages and cities. Looking around, the newcomer soon noticed that he was in the wrong place, that there was no one left to surprise here, and he quietly humbled himself and fell into the general tone. This general tone was composed from the outside out of some special, personal dignity, which imbued almost every inhabitant of the prison. As if, in fact, the title of a convict, a decided one, constituted some kind of rank, and an honorable one at that. No signs of shame or remorse! However, there was also some kind of outward humility, so to speak official, some kind of calm reasoning: “We are a lost people,” they said, “we didn’t know how to live in freedom, now break the green street, check the ranks.” - “I didn’t listen to my father and mother, now listen to the drum skin.” - “I didn’t want to sew with gold, now hit the stones with a hammer.” All this was said often, both in the form of moral teaching and in the form of ordinary sayings and proverbs, but never seriously. All these were just words. It is unlikely that any of them internally admitted their lawlessness. If someone who is not a convict tries to reproach a prisoner for his crime, to scold him (although, however, it is not in the Russian spirit to reproach a criminal), there will be no end to the curses. And what masters they were all at swearing! They swore subtly and artistically. They elevated swearing to a science; they tried to take it not so much with an offensive word, but with an offensive meaning, spirit, idea - and this is more subtle, more poisonous. Continuous quarrels further developed this science between them. All these people worked under pressure, as a result they were idle, and as a result they became corrupted: if they had not been corrupted before, they became corrupted in hard labor. All of them did not gather here of their own free will; they were all strangers to each other.

“The devil took three bast shoes before he gathered us into one heap!” - they said to themselves; and therefore gossip, intrigue, women's slander, envy, quarrel, anger were always in the foreground in this pitch-black life. No woman could be such a woman as some of these murderers. I repeat, among them there were people of strong character, accustomed to breaking and commanding their entire lives, seasoned, fearless. These people were somehow involuntarily respected; they, for their part, although they were often very jealous of their fame, generally tried not to be a burden to others, did not engage in empty curses, behaved with extraordinary dignity, were reasonable and almost always obedient to their superiors - not out of the principle of obedience , not out of consciousness of responsibilities, but as if under some kind of contract, realizing mutual benefits. However, they were treated with caution. I remember how one of these prisoners, a fearless and decisive man, known to his superiors for his brutal inclinations, was called to punishment for some crime. It was a summer day, time off from work. The staff officer, the closest and immediate commander of the prison, came himself to the guardhouse, which was right next to our gates, to be present at the punishment. This major was some kind of fatal creature for the prisoners, he brought them to the point that they trembled at him. He was insanely strict, “throwing himself at people,” as the convicts said. What they feared most about him was his penetrating, lynx-like gaze, from which nothing could be hidden. He somehow saw without looking. Entering the prison, he already knew what was happening at the other end of it. The prisoners called him eight-eyed. His system was false. He only embittered already embittered people with his frenzied, evil actions, and if there had not been a commandant over him, a noble and sensible man, who sometimes moderated his wild antics, then he would have caused great troubles with his management. I don’t understand how he could have ended safely; he retired alive and well, although, however, he was put on trial.

The prisoner turned pale when they called him. Usually he silently and resolutely lay down under the rods, silently endured the punishment and got up after the punishment, as if disheveled, calmly and philosophically looking at the failure that had happened. However, they always dealt with him carefully. But this time he considered himself to be right for some reason. He turned pale and, quietly away from the escort, managed to put a sharp English shoe knife into his sleeve. Knives and all kinds of sharp instruments were terribly prohibited in the prison. The searches were frequent, unexpected and serious, the punishments were cruel; but since it is difficult to find a thief when he has decided to hide something special, and since knives and tools were an ever-present necessity in prison, despite searches, they were not transferred. And if they were selected, then new ones were immediately created. The whole convict rushed to the fence and looked through the cracks of their fingers with bated breath. Everyone knew that Petrov this time would not want to lie under the rod and that the end had come for the major. But at the most decisive moment, our major got into a droshky and drove off, entrusting the execution to another officer. “God himself saved!” – the prisoners said later. As for Petrov, he calmly endured the punishment. His anger subsided with the major's departure. The prisoner is obedient and submissive to a certain extent; but there is an extreme that should not be crossed. By the way: nothing could be more curious than these strange outbursts of impatience and obstinacy. Often a person endures for several years, humbles himself, endures the most severe punishments, and suddenly breaks through for some small thing, for some trifle, for almost nothing. At another glance, one might even call him crazy; Yes, that's what they do.

I have already said that for several years I have not seen among these people the slightest sign of repentance, not the slightest painful thought about their crime, and that most of them internally consider themselves completely right. It is a fact. Of course, vanity, bad examples, youthfulness, false shame are largely the reason for this. On the other hand, who can say that he has traced the depths of these lost hearts and read in them the secrets of the whole world? But after all, it was possible, at so many years, to at least notice something, to catch, to catch in these hearts at least some feature that would indicate inner melancholy, about suffering. But this was not the case, positively not the case. Yes, crime, it seems, cannot be understood from given, ready-made points of view, and its philosophy is somewhat more difficult than is believed. Of course, prisons and the system of forced labor do not correct the criminal; they only punish him and protect society from further attacks by the villain on his peace of mind. In the criminal, prison and the most intensive hard labor develop only hatred, thirst for forbidden pleasures and terrible frivolity. But I am firmly convinced that the famous cell system achieves only a false, deceptive, external goal. It sucks the life juice out of a person, enervates his soul, weakens it, frightens it, and then presents a morally withered mummy, a half-crazed man, as an example of correction and repentance. Of course, a criminal who rebels against society hates it and almost always considers himself right and him guilty. Moreover, he has already suffered punishment from him, and through this he almost considers himself cleansed, even. One can finally judge from such points of view that one almost has to acquit the criminal himself. But, despite all kinds of points of view, everyone will agree that there are crimes that always and everywhere, according to all kinds of laws, from the beginning of the world are considered indisputable crimes and will be considered such as long as a person remains a person. Only in prison did I hear stories about the most terrible, the most unnatural acts, the most monstrous murders, told with the most uncontrollable, most childishly cheerful laughter. One parricide in particular never escapes my memory. He was from the nobility, served and was something of a prodigal son to his sixty-year-old father. He was completely dissolute in behavior and got into debt. His father limited him and persuaded him; but the father had a house, there was a farm, money was suspected, and the son killed him, thirsting for an inheritance. The crime was discovered only a month later. The killer himself filed an announcement with the police that his father had disappeared to an unknown location. He spent this entire month in the most depraved manner. Finally, in his absence, the police found the body. In the yard, along its entire length, there was a ditch for sewage drainage, covered with boards. The body lay in this ditch. It was dressed and put away, the gray head was cut off, put to the body, and the killer put a pillow under the head. He didn't confess; was deprived of nobility and rank and exiled to work for twenty years. The entire time I lived with him, he was in the most excellent, cheerful mood. He was an eccentric, frivolous, extremely unreasonable person, although not at all a fool. I never noticed any particular cruelty in him. The prisoners despised him not for the crime, of which there was no mention, but for his stupidity, for the fact that he did not know how to behave. In conversations, he sometimes remembered his father. Once, speaking to me about the healthy build that was hereditary in their family, he added: “Here my parent

. ... break the green street, check the rows. – The expression has the meaning: to go through a line of soldiers with spitzrutens, receiving a court-determined number of blows on the bare back.

Staff officer, the closest and immediate commander of the prison... - It is known that the prototype of this officer was the parade ground major of the Omsk prison V. G. Krivtsov. In a letter to his brother dated February 22, 1854, Dostoevsky wrote: “Platz-Major Krivtsov is a scoundrel, of which there are few, a petty barbarian, a troublemaker, a drunkard, everything disgusting you can imagine.” Krivtsov was dismissed and then put on trial for abuses.

. ... the commandant, a noble and sensible man... - The commandant of the Omsk fortress was Colonel A.F. de Grave, according to the memoirs of the senior adjutant of the Omsk corps headquarters N.T. Cherevin, “the kindest and most worthy man.”

Petrov. - In the documents of the Omsk prison there is a record that the prisoner Andrei Shalomentsev was punished “for resisting the parade-ground major Krivtsov while punishing him with rods and uttering words that he would certainly do something to himself or kill Krivtsov.” This prisoner may have been the prototype of Petrov; he came to hard labor “for tearing the epaulette off the company commander.”

. ...the famous cell system... - Solitary confinement system. The question of establishing solitary prisons in Russia on the model of the London prison was put forward by Nicholas I himself.

. ...one parricide... - The prototype of the nobleman-"parricide" was D.N. Ilyinsky, about whom seven volumes of his court case have reached us. Outwardly, in terms of events and plot, this imaginary “parricide” is the prototype of Mitya Karamazov in Dostoevsky’s last novel.